Opinion: Editorials

During a rally at the Federal Building in Eugene, Ore., earlier this month, a protestor holds up a sign against the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Ammon Bundy and his armed followers. (Andy Nelson / The Register-Guard)

The unlawful armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon could be close to ending. Or not. Such vigilante actions have a way of inspiring copycat protests elsewhere, often by militants who are more fanatical than their predecessors. So there could be more trouble just around the bend even if authorities are able to end the nearly month-long seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore.

The death of at least one militant and wounding of another in a shootout with law enforcement officers Tuesday is regrettable, but the protesters seemed to be prepared for this eventuality. In fact, they were inviting it. As soon as this Jan. 3 seizure escalated to armed confrontation, responsibility for any tragic conclusion rested solely with the extremists.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, who was arrested in Tuesday's confrontation, always had it in his power to disarm and turn the symbolic occupation into an encampment-style protest — sort of a right-wing Occupy movement. That wouldn't have made his protest legal, but it certainly would have made it more palatable to those Americans who don't share the distorted view that government overreach requires a militia-style uprising.

Instead, Bundy and his supporters decided to make this a gun-rights stand on top of other ill-conceived demands that federal lands be ceded to private ranchers. This occupation mimicked a 2014 armed standoff at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada that arose over the family's disagreement with federal grazing-rights restrictions.

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The protesters took on the mantle of lawless fanatics, initially using their guns to stand up for two men convicted of arson for having set fire to federal land and to hiding the fact that they had been poaching. Their message seemed to be that U.S. law was theirs to define, as though it were a smorgasbord from which citizens may pick and choose.

The gunmen defied local police and federal authorities to intervene. Local groups urged the protesters to end their siege. Law enforcers demonstrated extraordinary tolerance when Bundy and others would leave their encampment to travel, hold meetings or stock up on food. They pushed everyone's patience to the limit, and the time for an intervention was overdue.

Never once did they convey a desire to end this peacefully. Their taunting manner and threats to shoot law enforcers turned the protest into something more akin to a terrorist standoff than a fight for liberty.

The Bundy Ranch Facebook page describes the protesters as "peaceful patriots ... supporting the Constitution" and asks, "Who are the terrorists?"

They were not peaceful. They were not patriots, and they were not supporting the Constitution. In our book, they are outlaws whose infliction of terror was never justified, regardless of the cause.

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